copyright 2005 by Blake Lamar
“You alright, son,” Jim said, helping him to his feet. “That’s a bad bump.”
“I’m fine,” Benjamin said. “I’ll be fine.”
“I knew this was bound to happen sooner or later, teasing them cows like that with all this good grass. I told the office people to have them put a barbwire fence around this place when Mr. Reynolds started grazing this field out. A barbwire fence with maybe some hotwire running top and bottom. But, no. They said it was too gruesome in a place where kids might be, as if a cemetery aint already gruesome to a kid that aint old enough or smart enough not to be touching hotwire.”
He sat Benjamin into the cab of the truck and walked around to the other side. He continued to honk his horn as he drove over the fallen down part of the fence and on into the pasture.
“I been keeping a bag of cubes in the back for just this occasion,” he said. “That’ll keep em busy enough while I get that fence back up. You sure you don’t want me to run you home real quick. Let your momma have a look at that bump. I doubt the clinic’s still open.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “Just hurts a little is all.”
“Man, you really had a strangle hold on that baby calf,” Jim said. “Getting ready for the junior rodeo, I reckon.”
“I don’t rodeo.”
“I didn’t think so. Cemetery’s no place to be practicing your skills no how. And those calves they have you chase down are a might bigger than the one you was wrestling.”
“I wasn’t wrestling it.”
“Then what was you doing? If you wasn’t trying to take it down, you was being a might friendly. You wasn’t trying to rustle it was you? Tie it up in your backyard for a little while, waiting on some veal.”
Benjamin didn’t say anything.
“But you sure ticked momma off. Lucky a little bump on the head is all you came away with. Cows is docile mostly, but you go messing with their babies and they can be just as mean as anything. It’s a wonder that calf let you get so close. They’s usually skittisher’n a man with a million dollars sticking out his pockets.”
“I don’t know,” Benjamin said. “He just came up to me.”
“Maybe you just one of those people that’s got a way with animals,” he said. “A whisperer, like on that movie. You the cow whisperer or something. Oh, man, that’s a good one.”
Benjamin started laughing. It was the first time he’d felt good in a week. And his stomach let out a loud rumble to match his laughter.
He was hungry.
He was so hungry.
THE END
1 comment:
Benjamin wrestling the calf reminds me of Jacob wrestling with God. Perhaps Benjamin had to struggle and come to terms with reality for himself.
I really liked the ending. Thanks for sharing it.
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